Here is the story.

A year ago I was making a server change, and a client of mine just signed up. Within a week he experienced some downtime due to the server switch. He paid for a full year upfront. After he had that brief period of downtime, he decided to cancel his hosting. About a month later he asked for a refund, I really don't remember what I said back, because it was almost a year ago.

A few days ago, I got an email from him asking for the refund again, keep in mind this whole incident took place last September, 11 months ago. What would you suggest I do?

If you didn't provide the service I suggest you refund the money. That would be most ethical thing to do. If the client paid by cc he can charge back as well and it'll cost you more.

I'd say no. He had the service for 11 months, I would consider a partial refund for 1/12th of the total payment (since there's 1 month left in his service). But after 11 months your pretty safe to say no.

And he cannot request a chargeback after 11 months, I believe the limit is somewhere between 30 and 60 days.

edit: looked into it, and it varies by bank... some are over a year :eek:

I agree with you as well, I'm just disappointed it took him 11 months to contact me about it.

He paid via paypal anyways, so I don't have to be worried about a chargeback. He has threatened me with legal issues though.

Legally, can he do anything to me, as he has mentioned in his emails to me.

Originally posted by Jako
Legally, can he do anything to me, as he has mentioned in his emails to me.
It all depends on your TOS and how you handled his request for termination.
Do you have a refund period identified?
Did he initially request the cancellation within your refund period?

Did you leave his account up and active? If you didn't provide the service, I would give him his money back. If you left the account active, then it would depend on what was said when he requested the cancellation. Did you save the emails? Did he?

How you answered these questions (and many others), could effect if he has a legal case against you. If you did terminate the account when he requested, he probably does have a case because you obviously acknowledged his request to cancel.

Was he hosted with you since then or did he remove his site and you just never gave the money back?

If he has been hosted with you (had an active site on your server) since sign up then I'd refund for whatever time is left in his contract.

If he removed his site from your server when he intially requested the refund and didn't put it back up I'd refund him which you should've done a long time ago.

Did he contact you in between time or what happened? This is weird. I mean I can't imagine paying somebody for a year and then not asking for a refund until a year later.

Jako, he probably can sue you (it seems like you can sue anybody for anything these days), but I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Of course, I'm assuming it's a shared hosting account and he's paying no more than $10 a month....if it's a dedicated server, I would do like I'll Host It says and give him a 1/12th refund.

It really is unfortunate that some clients have to be so difficult - it ruins an otherwise cheery business.

So he signed up with you a year ago, and had some downtime right away, and asked to cancel like nearly immediately and he didn't cancel after all? Or he did cancel and you haven't hosted him but like that first couple weeks after he signed up and you didn't give him the refund last year like he asked?

To me the fair thing is to refund the unused portion of the payment, if he paid for 12 and used 11 then I wouldn't refund more than a month's worth, if he paid for 12 and used a couple weeks, then I'd probably just refund completely if asked.

Originally posted by Jako
Here is the story.

A year ago I was making a server change, and a client of mine just signed up. Within a week he experienced some downtime due to the server switch. He paid for a full year upfront. After he had that brief period of downtime, he decided to cancel his hosting. About a month later he asked for a refund, I really don't remember what I said back, because it was almost a year ago.

A few days ago, I got an email from him asking for the refund again, keep in mind this whole incident took place last September, 11 months ago. What would you suggest I do?

so you provided him with 1 month of hosting? or 11 months?

1 month, give a full refund.
11 months, just prorate it.